Infotech Oulu Annual Report 2014 - Research Groups

The research of Infotech Oulu is carried out in groups. The research groups mainly operate in those laboratories and departments where their directors are working. The selection of Infotech Oulu research groups is for a four-year period, and it is based on external scientific evaluation of the research presented by the applicants. The last evaluation took place in autumn 2013. The evaluators are internationally renowned scientists in information technology: Professor Hans Burkhardt, Department of Computer Science, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany; Dr. Mark Craig Reed, University of New South Wales, and Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia; Professor Hannu Tenhunen, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and Professor Bernard C.Y. Tan, National University of Singapore (took part only in remote evaluation).

Information technology is designated as one of the four focus research areas of the University of Oulu, including machine vision and ubiquitous computing, wireless communications, high-speed electronics and photonics, biomedical engineering, and information systems. The main research areas of Infotech Oulu currently are:

electronics

communications engineering

computer science and information engineering

Funding

Infotech Oulu organization

The University of Oulu provided special funding of EUR 400 000 for Infotech Oulu in 2014. About 75% of this was directed to support for the best research groups based on the evaluation results. For the year 2014, EUR 1 020 000 was granted by the University of Oulu to 34 student positions of Infotech Oulu Doctoral Program. The University of Oulu granted an additional EUR 100 000 for funding its courses and coordination. The total funding from the University of Oulu was EUR 1 520 000 for 2014. The table below shows the funding from the University of Oulu in 2014, excluding any funding that the research groups may have been awarded in their own right.

Funding from the University of Oulu

EUR

special funding to Infotech Oulu

400 000

doctoral student positions

1 020 000

doctoral program; courses, coordination

100 000

total

1 520 000

Research groups

The research groups are mainly funded externally. The total sum of annual external funding for the research groups was EUR 14.7 million in 2014. Only about a quarter of the research work is financed through internal funding in the form of salaries of professors, research assistants, etc., excluding their estimated time used for teaching. The main source of financial support is Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, representing almost half of our external funding.

The following table shows the total external funding of the research groups in 2014.

Source

EUR

Academy of Finland

3 987 000

Tekes

6 747 000

other domestic public

842 000

domestic private

891 000

international

2 206 000

total

14 673 000

Personnel

The number of personnel in the research groups of Infotech Oulu was 347 at the end of 2014. The table below shows the total number of personnel in different positions. The number of professors also includes acting professors, FidiPro professors and VTT’s research professors.